Excessive interregional disparities in the functioning of the socio-economic system in the country substantially affect the dynamics of its socio-economic development, significantly slowing it down, as well as creating obstacles to its efficient and timely structural transformation. The analysis of territorial differentiations of socio-economic development in Ukraine’s regions according to the selected indicators in 2014-2020 shows that despite the general growth of the socio-economic development level in the regions, the asymmetric type of regional development continued to dominate. Excessively high levels of GRP differentiation per capita, capital and foreign direct investment per capita, combined with a slight differentiation of disposable income and local budget revenues (excluding transfers) per capita, showed a significant gap between the efficiency of regional economic systems and quality of inhabitants’ life in the regions. To assess the efficiency of the strategic goals and priorities implementation of the 2020 Regional Development Strategy of Ukraine, an assessment of annual indicators related to the regulation of interregional differentiation is conducted. The negative impact of complex socio-political and financial-economic circumstances, as well as insufficient efficiency of state regional policy instruments, did not allow to achieve the projected rates of most indicators within the priorities of the 2020 Regional Development Strategy of Ukraine related to the regulation of interregional differentiation. The systemic nature of the interregional disparities in Ukraine causes the low efficiency of numerous attempts to solve these problems with the help of separate tools of regional policy. The main focus and resources in the strategic objectives implementation in regional development related to the reduction of interregional disparities should be focused on creating favorable conditions for the most efficient use of regional socio-economic capacity based on the strengths of each region and specialized innovative solutions. 

interregional disparities, socio-economic development, territorial differentiation, state regional policy, instruments of regional policy 

The paper provides the evaluation of the efficiency of financing the regional policy promotion activities from the EU structural funds and efficiency of funding of national and regional smart specialization strategies’ priorities in 2014-2020. It determines 6 key smart specialization domains among 216 RIS3 of national and regional (NUTS 2) levels: agriculture, food, and biotechnologies; green technologies, energy; transport, mobility, logistics; ICT; life sciences, biotechnologies, pharmacy, biotechnologies; material sciences and intellectual production. Four hypotheses on the close relationship between the investment volumes, directions, and results of their use are empirically verified. The results of the applied correlation analysis show the close relationship between the volumes of funding of the smart-specialization activities and the paces of agricultural output per capita with three clusters of countries by the distribution of funding by the strategic priorities. Regarding the other smart specialization priorities – “environmental technologies, energy efficiency” and “transport, mobility, logistics”, the dependence between the funding from the European Structural and Investment Funds and reducing CO2 emissions from new vehicles is proven. Support of strategic priorities “material science” and “smart production” by European Structural and Investment Funds in 2014-2020 is characterized by growing GRP volumes per capita with clear differences between the developed and average-level EU countries. The reasonability of supporting the implementation of the smart-priority “medicine, pharmacy, healthcare” in most RIS3 of EU countries and the substantial correlation of financial support from EU funds with the paces of state expenses on healthcare increase is substantiated. The conclusions about the efficiency of selected priorities, their high convergence ability, and the capacity to form transnational cooperation are made. 

regional policy, EU, smart-specialization strategy, priorities, efficiency evaluation 

Socio-economic implications of the voluntary association of territorial communities at the administrative and financial decentralization final stage and the expected reformatting of the administrative and territorial structure of Ukrainian regions create favorable conditions for the growth of cities’ economic power and their role in the development of regions and the country as a whole. It is worth noting that without strong regional centers it is difficult to develop strong regions. The main purpose of the article is to determine the features of the impact of administrative and financial decentralization on changing the cities’ positioning in the Carpathian region’s socio-economic system, as well as to outline the perspective directions of their development in the new administrative-territorial and financial system of Ukrainian regions. In particular, the article outlines the main reasons that cause the low activity of cities in the region during the implementation of administrative and financial decentralization in 2015-2017. The potential threats to the spatial development of the Carpathian region cities as a result of administrative-territorial and budgetary system reformatting are highlighted, as well as possible ways for their effective settlement are defined. The features of the cities’ positioning in the economy of regions and districts as administrative and financial decentralization result in 2015-2017 convincingly testify that the Carpathian region centers and cities of regional significance are those “centers of growth” that most actively influence the process of socio-economic development in their areas, including due to the benefits of fiscal decentralization. In the long run, uniting around the cities of regional significance and effective cooperation of regional centers with neighboring united territorial communities can intensify the process of urban development, open up opportunities for balancing the interests of these cities as growth centers and suburban territorial communities interested in improving the quality of their inhabitants’ life. 

administrative and financial decentralization, united territorial communities, cities of region significance, city positioning, financial capacity 

This article has revealed the peculiarities of the influence of the oblast city centers on the endogenous regional development by way of an analysis of the basic local potentials of urban economy, as well as brought to light the main problems of the mobilization of endogenous resources. The current urbanization trends in Ukraine have been estimated within the context of providing endogenous development, and the main obstacles to the realization of the scenario of endogenous development have been identified: demographic, economic and institutional ones. The development of the oblast city centers has been analyzed according to their key indicators, the comparison of the results of urban and regional development during the years 2010-2016 has been carried out, the indicators of the elasticity of the growth rates of the city and oblasts have been calculated, conclusions on ensuring the positive impact of oblast centers on their own regions and the reasons for their absence have been made. The measures towards the effective use of local resources, the reduction of social stratification of the population, providing them with a wider access to basic services have been proposed. The implementation of a new development policy of urban centers as hubs of economic activity will contribute to the cities’ endogenous development, to the increase of their global competitiveness. 

endogenous development, urbanization, cities-oblast centers, regional development, coefficients of elasticity